On Monday 30 January, PERG and DPP organized a joint lecture, inviting José Fernández-Albertos from the Institute for Public Goods and Policies of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) to give a talk on how the crisis influenced policy preferences in Spain and who voters blame according to their political preferences. The paper was discussed by Anil Duman from the Department of Political Science. The discussion mainly focused on how partisan bias and framings of the crisis as being related to globalization condition the attribution of blame for the crisis. The very interesting results gathered from an experimental survey in Spain showed that (1) blame for who is responsible for the economic crisis is greatly affected by partisanship; (2) making globalization as a cause of the crisis salient exonerates the government of blame, but only for co-partisans of the government; (3) citizens are willing to blame other globalization-related factors for the crisis, in particular, European governments and foreign investors and blame the domestic government less. The results expand our understanding of public opinion dynamics during major economic recessions, and also suggest conditions under which “scapegoating” globalization can occur.
José Fernández-Albertos is a Permanent Research Fellow at the Institute for Public Goods and Policies of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). He holds a Ph.D in Political Science from Harvard University and is also a doctor-member of the Juan March Institute in Madrid. His research spans across the fields of international political economy and comparative politics, covering the political underpinnings of economic and monetary integration, the institutional foundations for universalistic public goods provision, and public opinion and electoral politics.